photo by: Contributed

SparkWheel volunteers work with students during the FutureNow: Finance workshop.

Balancing budgets, careers and curveballs, SparkWheel’s student finance program lets kids step into the future and discover how quickly paychecks can disappear.

The FutureNow: Finance program is an interactive workshop that SparkWheel hosts in collaboration with partner schools to help middle and high school students understand and prepare for real world financial responsibilities.

The Lawrence group SparkWheel was recently one of eight state organizations recently awarded grant money from the Office of the State Bank Commissioner to help increase financial literacy for Kansas consumers. The $25,000 in funding it received will support the students who participate in the FutureNow: Finance program.

In 2024-2025, there were 3,402 “instances” of student participation in FutureNow: Finance. The term “instances” refers to the number of times a student engaged in the program because in some areas, students attend more than once during the year.

Most students have never taken a budgeting course, let alone considered how much their desired career will pay, the cost of housing, car payments and even their TV and cell phone bills. The experience has students imagining themselves as an adult in their 20s, and giving students an opportunity to manage their pretend finances on profiles of varied income levels, career fields and personal choices.

photo by: Contributed

A student participates in SparkWheel’s FutureNow: Finance workshop.

“They are randomly assigned a life, and they might find themselves married with two kids, divorced with a kid, never married or single and making a fortune,” Malissa Martin, president and CEO of SparkWheel said. “And then we have some who are not making enough money, really struggling to make ends meet and so forth.”

While these are critical skills someone needs to learn in their lifetime, they often fall behind other priorities in school.

Volunteers of SparkWheel are stationed at at least 13 booths, Martin said, and students make their way around the room to each table to shop for housing, transportation, communication services, childcare, groceries, utilities, medical care and more. Students will also be put in situations where they have to consider savings, charity, and unexpected expenses that occur in daily life, like accidents, injury and repairs.

“They get presented with a ‘checkbook’ and a piece of paper that tells them the circumstances of their lives, what their job is and what they actually make,” Martin said. ” … And they have a month’s pay on their register based on the job they’ve got.”

Martin added that there’s also a “chance booth,” where students can be dumped with either good news or bad news.

“It’s everything from your great aunt passed and left you $1,000 to you were in a car wreck and your car has been totaled,” Martin said. ” … You have a broken leg and you cannot work for eight weeks.”

Martin also added that it’s been a great experience for the volunteers too, many of which specialize in the booth they’re stationed at.

“It lets people really talk to kids and often talk to them from their professional area and give real advice or real perspective,” Martin said. “They feel like they’re really doing something that matters.”

Even though students have a long time before being put into these large-scale financial decisions, the purpose of the program is to have them be aware of real-world scenarios and strengthen their financial knowledge.

“FutureNow: Finance is a fun event with a serious message,” Martin said. “And what I want to see happen is it have an impact on the kids who participate in it … (to have) something that will stay with them and support them making better decisions as they grow up and as they really do begin adulting.”

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As far as how this program contributes to SparkWheel’s overall mission, Martin said the core of the organization’s work is addressing things that are happening outside of the classroom for students and families.

“Kids cannot learn if they are hungry, they cannot learn if they’re being bullied, they cannot learn if they have unmet physical, medical or dental needs,” Martin said. ” … And there are just so many things that can happen outside the classroom that can have such a profoundly negative effect on the student.”

SparkWheel provides integrated student support services within schools addressing those academic and non-academic barriers while they also connect families to other resources – like after-school tutoring, mentoring, life skills training and facilitating community involvement for students and families to improve wellbeing and success.

photo by: Contributed

SparkWheel volunteers work with students during the FutureNow: Finance workshop.

“It’s not all basic needs,” Martin said. “It’s also helping complete FAFSA forms and scholarship applications and college applications because we strongly believe that there are a variety of valuable post secondary pathways.”

SparkWheel can go on to service students once they graduate high school up to the age of 25.

“The reason we go all the way to 25 is (because) the seniors who we are working with on case management, the day they graduate from high school, they do not wake up the next day with none of the same issues that they were dealing with the day before.”

She added that while the student graduated and may have a plan for the future, if the family is still in poverty or if the family has inconsistent access to basic needs, then they still need some support to navigate through those challenges.

The organization currently serves 21 districts in the state of Kansas and others in Missouri, and currently one school in the Lawrence school district takes part in its services, Prairie Park Elementary.